Rainbow princess

I don't know about you, but I find throwing a kid's birthday party to be a tad stressful.  It seems the times of having just a cake and ice cream are outdated.  Really, how did our mothers do it without pinterest!  It is crazy just how the times have changed since I was young.  Oh, the pressure to produce a wonderful memory.  Okay, perhaps I am putting the pressure on myself.

My now 8 year old daughter wanted a party.  After my son stated that she couldn't because he didn't get one when he turned 8, I caved.  Am I a bad mom?  

For those of you with a fickle child, you know how much hair one can pull out as your 'precious' child changes her mind every five minutes.  The bad thing is that my daughter knows how to hop on pinterest to look for 'party ideas.'  What a can of worms!

After going through a million ideas, our theme finalized to princess with rainbow colors.  During my daughter's research, she found quite a few pricey dresses.  After much discussion, we compromised.  I was to make a no-sew rainbow tutu with some sort of matching shirt.  Of course, all the girls needed a tutu.  Oh yes, crowns too.  

Are you ready to see some of the decorations?

Gotta say, the ceiling idea looked so good on pinterest.  In reality, it was a pain in my rear but I think I pulled it off.

I don't know if you remember the lemonade stand I made or not.  This was a perfect occasion to drag it out of the garage.

I think I was up to my elbows in tulle the whole time I was making the tutus.  I decided to use them as a pop of color while we glamified the girls with makeup, glitter, fingernail polish, and crowns.

I had made lace crowns for the girls.  

After the girls got their beauty treatments, we played pin the horn on the unicorn.  I taped two pieces of cardboard together, sketched and painted the unicorn.

We played a couple of games but the big hit was karaoke.  I loved watching them.  It was a riot!  Unfortunately, I was enjoying the entertainment so much, I forgot to take pictures.

All the stress and work was for my rainbow princess!

Thanks for letting me share!

Ahoy Matey

I was in over my head on Saturday with 6-7 year old pirates.  My son had decided to have a pirates themed birthday party.  There were 19 pirates invited and 14 showed up.  I know.  What was I thinking?!  I put a lot of time into trying to plan it inexpensively.  I have to say google is a great thing.  Without it, I know I wouldn't have thought of all of the games I found from other people.

To set the scene for the party, they say it starts with the invitation.  I downloaded a rapscallion font from Dafont.com.  I printed the invite out on parchment office paper.  Then proceeded to burn the edges of each invitation.  Yes, it was time consuming but look how authentic it looked.

When each child arrived, they were given a red bandanna, eye patch, an inflatable sword, and face painted beard.  Then, they were ushered outside for games to save injury to any breakables.  Of course, it was chaotic with swords flying everywhere!

First, the boys dug up gold coins.  If the coin had a black dot, they were on the black pearl.  If not, they were on the flying Dutchman.  Once in teams, they had to get their sea legs by relay racing against the other team.  They had to run around a tree and the playground while holding a full cup of water with the goal being not spilling any water. 

Next game, we swabbed the deck by using a dollar mop and ball to race around trees and the playground in sort of a relay race. 

Of course the pirates had to walk the plank which was a 2x4 extended across two outdoor side tables.

We passed the pirates version of hot potato passing a skull instead.  Ate a lot of sugar! 
 
 

 
Each pirate walked away with a little goodies bag that I made by using the little black bags and printing off this graphic on fabric and adhering to the bag with a spray adhesive.  Inside they had pirate chocolate lollipops I made, pirate stickers, tattoos, and a pirate flag bead craft.
 
 

I hope all the boys had a great time being pirates for the day.  I wanted the thank you cards to be memorable.  So, I had each boy hold up an empty frame and take their picture.  Here is the photo thank you card I came up with in Photoshop elements.

Now that I have sent those off to be printed.  I have finally recovered!  The amount of energy from 14 six  to seven year old boys was off the charts or maybe I am getting old.  Any rate, I hope all the boys will remember a great pirate birthday party.